Saying Six

Proverbs 22:29

Do you see a man who excels in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before unknown men.

Don’t count on being the next Harry T.

“Hard work pays off,” your mother (probably) told you when you were eight. “There are no shortcuts.”

She was right, and you knew it. At the same time, you found yourself appealing to exceptions. ‘What about Harry T in the other class?’ you thought. ‘He never studies, and he’s doing fine.’

Saying Six offers a biblical framework in which to place the Harry Ts of this world. They are, indeed, exceptions to a rule — a rule so foundational that it made it into the first three chapters of the Bible:

In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it were you taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return. (Genesis 3:19)

Before the fall, work was a daily requirement (Gen 2:15), but not a prerequisite for eating fruit (Gen 2:16). After the fall, work is still required as a law of God, but it is also essential to our survival.

Despite instinctively knowing this, our actions often betray a disbelief in it. On a daily basis, we expect the earth to bear fruit for which we did not labour. We want our plants to grow, our children to learn, our relationships to improve; and all without the hard work each of these things require. It is a matter of humility and repentance, therefore, to acknowledge that fruit only appears after the ground has been tilled in the sweat of your face.

Of course, God may engineer an exception to this rule, by handsomely blessing you with fruitful output that has no apparent correlation to work input. But proverbs like Saying Six prohibit us from expecting this. We ought not to presume that we will be just like Harry T.

Note also that ‘true’ work is to be distinguished from both ‘hard’ and ‘skilful’ work. One man may skillfully complete his assigned duties by lunch time, then head home for a nap and a beer. Another man may inefficiently slave away at a task all day with no success, only to return home late at night, deeply unhappy. Neither of these men will stand before kings, because neither man ‘excels in his work.’ Christians are not called to work hard without skill, or skillfully without effort. Both are wrong. God wants skill and effort combined together.

If these two ingredients are present, then the man himself — not just his work — is like a seed planted in the ground. He will eventually germinate into something magnificent. As the proverb says, ‘he will stand before kings.’

An objector might point out that the kings and rulers of this world are usually unrepentant sinners. And as sinners, they hate righteous people, and righteous works (cp 1 Jn 3:12). How, then, could a righteous man rise to the top in such a sinful environment? Or, to put it another way, how could such good seed germinate in such cursed ground?

But was this not God’s promise to Adam in Genesis 3:17-19? Yes, the cursed ground would naturally give rise to ‘thorns and thistles’ (v18); but even in this environment, he was required to grow bread (v19). In fact, not only was man instructed to conquer the cursed ground, he was tasked with taking dominion over the entire earth — not just before the fall (Gen 1:28), but also after it (Gen 9:1-2). What this teaches is that God expects men to be productive, even in cursed environments.

Tracing this sixth saying to its practical edge, we find a useful example. Imagine a man — his name happens to be Don Wannado — who arrives home from work, heavy and displeased.

“It’s a sinful world, dear.” He observes.

His wife, who is microwaving dinner, sighs. “So you didn’t get the promotion.”

“Can you believe the new guy, Miles Ahead, got it? He’s only been there six months. And I know for a fact he is the most debauched man you’ll ever meet. Has a new girl every week. Never stops drinking. And I’m pretty sure he’s on steroids.”

“Mmm-hmm. You told me. In fact, we spoke for hours about it the other night.”

“Yeah, but it really gets to me! These go-getter types always seem to leave us good-living people in the dust.”

For the remainder of the night, Don continues to wax eloquent — in between bites of unhealthy food and episodes of his favourite TV show. At an hour he should have been ashamed of, he finally submits to his nightly five-and-a-half hours of sleep, and arrives at work the next day, even more heavy and displeased.

The moral of this story is: don’t be like Don. (For the record, you shouldn’t be like Miles, either. This is one of those stories — like in the book of Judges — where you squint in vain for a character you like). When a man blames his distinct lack of success on the sinful people and institutions in which he finds himself planted, he is despising the commandment of God in Genesis 3:19, and disregarding the principle of Saying Six. For, when your ways please Yahweh, even your sinful boss can be at peace with you. When you ‘excel in your work’, the gravity of an upwards career trajectory will apply to you, too. You will fall upwards. This is because even sinners want productive workers.

Of course, gravity is not irresistible. A ball might get stuck in a tree, even though a downwards force is still working on it at a consistent 9.8 m/s². By the same token, a righteous, productive man may happen to get stuck in his career; but this does nothing to negate the gravity of Saying Six. It is still working upon him.

There’s no getting around it, even in a fallen world: those who work hard and efficiently prosper. They go places. Even if their name isn’t Harry T.

Scriptures for Comparison

Proverbs 12:24

Proverbs 10:4

Colossians 3:23-24

Proverbs 14:23

Ecclesiastes 9:10

Luke 16:10

Matthew 25:21